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7.30.2015

If you have a Pinterest account, you can follow my new "Apocalypse Manuscripts" board. I only have a few pins so far, but I will add more as I do more research for the pieces I plan to paint for the Apocalypse Prize art contest this year.

Since it's always so long between completed works, I thought this might be one more way I can let people in on my work process which might help other artists in the same boat. The "I'm trying desperately to understand Medieval art and there are so few resources available" boat.

You can find it here, or in the widget I just added to my blog sidebar:

4.27.2015

Sorry for the long absence! I've been very busy working on a few projects that I couldn't show on my blog just yet. I can finally show you one of them now. I designed the front and back cover for this book:

The Rending of Christendom: Readings and Questions by Phillip Campbell

My friend Phillip Campbell, a history teacher for Homeschool Connections, has created an excellent high-school level course on the Reformation/Counter-Reformation era based on primary source documents. The book is designed to follow the online course, but it can certainly stand alone as it's own curriculum.

The
main book "The Rending of Christendom" has study questions after each
reading, and there is a separate answer key available. There is
currently a 15% off sale if you buy both together:

I'm
about halfway through, and I think the selection of readings provides a
very broad and thorough understanding of the key players and events
without being overwhelming. I took a church history elective class at my
secular university, and I have to say that reading actual primary
sources like these acted as an antidote to my high school history
textbooks and marked the beginning of my conversion process from
Protestantism to Catholicism. If I know you in real life, I'd be happy
to show you my copy.

I don't profit at all from sales of this book, I just think it's a really great idea and worth promoting.

2.15.2015

I've been asked by the director of the Apocalypse Prize contest to post this announcement:

There will be a new competition this year, with a December 31st deadline.

The 2013 contest was a wonderful learning experience. This is an excellent way for artists of all ages to develop a good working understanding of medieval art and how to use its conventions fluently in their own work. Along the way, they will learn to analyze the subject matter analogically and create their own piece by researching and sketching examples from medieval manuscripts.

1.23.2015

"What is the good for man? It must be the ultimate end or object of human life: something that is in itself completely satisfying. Happiness fits this description. But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul."

10.30.2014

This is my first year as a homeowner, and with Halloween approaching I began to wonder what I would do for decorations. In light of this interesting article by Fr. Grunow about the Catholic roots of Halloween and why Americans came to think of it as a pagan holiday, I decided to try to use this opportunity to reengage the culture and maybe even evangelize my neighbors.

The crazy idea I came up with was to make little shrines to honor a few saints who died as martyrs for their faith in Christ. That way we can remember death, but in a way that points to the Kingdom of God and not the occult. I also hope people are drawn to some of the beautiful and unusual imagery. I made a banner wishing everyone a "Happy All Hallows' Eve" and will leave a basket of free holy cards outside the door. We have really good candy to hand out too!

I had three different sizes of cereal boxes, so I drew a gothic arch doorway that would fit nicely on the smallest box and traced it onto every box, and cut each opening with the x-acto. Then using the proportions of the largest box, I drew a gothic facade and traced it onto the black poster board three times. Then I traced the doorway onto each facade. I also traced the sides and tops of each box. Once all of the poster board pieces were cut out, I glued them to the cereal boxes, taking care to line up the opening in the front of the box with the opening in the facade.

I printed out pictures of St. Lucy, St. Peter, and St. Denis on 8.5" x 11" paper, trimmed the sides to fit, and glued them inside each box. Do this before you glue poster board over the top of the box! I also printed out their names, glued them to scroll shapes cut out of heavy white paper, and glued a name scroll onto each shrine.

It's also important to take breaks to smile at and/or nurse the cute baby on the floor near your work area.

Once you have the shrines assembled, they might look something like this:

I plan to make a few more next year since this was a last-minute idea.

My kids are pretty excited about them. J calls them "little churches." They just had their All Saints Day party at our homeschool co-op. S wanted to dress up as St. Barbara. I couldn't get her to hold both her tower and her holy card straight at the same time, so here are two pictures:

J went as St. Patrick, but he wouldn't wear his miter once we were home. He likes to dress up as a priest almost every day, so this isn't even really a costume for him ;)

Perhaps more importantly, if children learn to love beauty, they will love what is true and good.

With that in mind, when we moved into our new house, I realized that we lacked crucifixes for our children's room. It's strangely difficult to find a nice looking crucifix these days, and if I did manage to find one, I didn't want a blessed and expensive object to wind up broken or on the floor despite my 2-year-old's best intentions. So I thought, maybe I could make one that he could handle:

I found an unfinished wood hanging cross and a small unfinished wood plaque at Michaels. I sawed the slightly curved end off the bottom of the cross using a miter box and a handsaw. Then I screwed them together (I drilled a pilot hole first), and painted them brown (Daniel Smith brand Burnt Umber). Next I found a suitably beautiful looking piece of art on the web and resized it to fit on the cross. This is from St. Dominic Adoring the Crucifixion by Fra Angelico (left). I printed it on digital photo paper using my plain old inkjet printer, cut out the corpus and the INRI sign and glued them to the cross. I finished the whole thing with 2 coats of acrylic matte medium for a little protection. Now my son J uses it on his "altar" (Ikea dresser) to play Mass. I'll write a post about that another time.

My 4-year-old daughter, S, wanted one too of course. I found this little 4" x 3" wooden standing cross at Hobby Lobby. It has a small inset perfect for gluing art into!

I decided to go with an Italo-Byzantine style crucifix this time. Cimabue painted this one to hang in the Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence. I asked S paint the entire cross Ultramarine Blue. Cimabue's famous pupil, Giotto, was very fond of that color. Like the first project, I re-sized and printed the artwork on digital photo paper, cut it out and let S help me glue it into the inset. Then I painted the edges with gold craft paint (it looks a little better in real life) and finished it all with 2 coats of acrylic matte medium. This sits on her dresser along with a hand-embroidered picture of the Holy Family that her aunt brought her from Egypt.

If you would like to make these without the work of finding and re-sizing Wikipedia images, you can download a free template here:

The Adoration of the 24 Elders (Acrylic and metal leaf on panel board, 24" x 24")

The Adoration of the 24 Elders (Detail)

The Harlot Riding the Beast (Acrylic on panel board, 12" x 12")

The Marriage of the Lamb (Acrylic and metal leaf on panel board, 12" x 12")

I already loved medieval illuminated manuscripts, especially in the Gothic style, so I jumped at the opportunity to really research them in-depth to learn how to create works of art in continuity with the conventions of traditional Western iconography. During my research I unexpectedly fell in love with some Romanesque era manuscripts and they started influencing my work. I was also surprised to find how much the depiction of Christ in Majesty from the Westminster Psalter has in common with Byzantine Icons of Our Lord, and how even the most stylized drapery seemed to correspond to real-life observations of how fabric folds would fall on a form.

4.19.2014

Here is a craft you can make, maybe as an Easter present or as a way to teach kids about the Mass. It folds out into a tiny high altar with a little priest and altar boys. This started out as a gift idea for my children, but I decided to make it in a format that could be reproduced and write instructions for how to construct it.

3. Cut sides of altar and stairs along dashed line. Start below top dotted line. If you are using scissors, fold the card in half and snip a slot for the scissors to get started.

4. Score along dotted lines to make folding easier. Use dull side of x-acto blade or a single scissors blade. Make alternating folds like an accordion.

5. Cut out priest, glue front and back sides together. Fold tab on bottom so he can stand on feet.

6. Cut out each altar boy and fold front and back sides together. Fold backwards in the middle so they can kneel.

And there you have it:

"Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi."

If you're feeling really ambitious, color it, decorate the walls and floor, draw and cut out more figures and accessories (thurible, processional cross, etc), fold up front edge and make an altar rail.

If you use this, please feel free to leave a comment and tell me how your family liked it or what could be better for next time. If you send in a photo of the finished product in use, I might write a future post featuring the photos I receive (ardanziger@gmail.com).

4.11.2014

Over the weekend, I will be changing my settings so that my blog will be hosted on my own domain.
My old web portfolio at www.ardanziger.com will disappear and will be replaced by this blog website. One or both sites may be down for up to 48 hours. After that time, please update your links, bookmarks, etc.

3.29.2014

Dear readers,
I need to perform some maintenance on this blog this weekend, and then I will resume regular posting. My long-term plan is to integrate my blog and my web portfolio (www.ardanziger.com) into the same site.
Thank you!
A.R.

10.16.2013

Here is another sketch for my upcoming project. This Christ in Majesty will sit in the midst of the 24 elders. I'm glad I worked on small scale copy of an illuminated manuscript before this so I could learn some of the Romanesque style's conventions and apply them appropriately to my current piece. I hesitate to say that mine is a more "naturalistic" or "realistic" representation because those words tend to imply the downplaying of the supernatural and emphasis on the natural world. I am interested in reviving Western religious iconography (related to but distinct from Byzantine iconography) in the Roman Catholic tradition, and therefore I am very interested in a symbolic representation of supernatural realities. Anyway...

10.09.2013

Here is a sneak preview of a current work-in-process. I'm working out the drawing for a painting of the adoration of the twenty-four elders before God's throne in the book of Revelation. For reference, I actually sewed a full-length (18 ft.) toga, draped it around my husband, and snapped some photos. Here are two of my sketches:

9.30.2013

Today is the memorial of Saint Jerome, 340-420 A.D. Both a scholarly world-traveler and a desert ascetic, he is perhaps best known for his work on the Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate. It began as a project to create a translation of the four Gospels using the best Greek texts. Already fluent in both Greek and Latin, he later expended great effort to learn spoken and written Hebrew from a Jewish convert to Christianity, and consulted with rabbis to ensure the accuracy of his translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"To sum up, the Biblical knowledge of St. Jerome makes him rank first among ancient exegetes. In the first place, he was very careful as to the sources of his information. He required of the exegete a very extensive knowledge of sacred and profane history, and also of the linguistics and geography of Palestine. He never either categorically acknowledged or rejected the deuterocanonical books as part of the Canon of Scripture, and he repeatedly made use of them. On the inspiration, the existence of a spiritual meaning, and the freedom of the Bible from error, he holds the traditional doctrine."

Saint Jerome in his Study, Albrecht Dürer 1514

He was considered one of the original Four Doctors of the Church, and often appears in works of art with the others (St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory the Great.) Hint: Jerome is the one in the red cardinal's robe and hat. Though the office of cardinal did not technically exist at that time, he held a prominent position in the court of Pope Damasus I who encouraged him to translate the scriptures.

Four Doctors of the Church, Carlo Braccesco circa 1495

In other art he is shown studying in solitude, often wearing just a simple robe, with only a crucifix and skull in to meditate on. Sometimes he is shown with a lion, who, according to Jerome's medieval hagiography, befriended the saint after having a thorn removed from its paw.

Jerome in his Study, Niccolo Antonio Colantonio c. 1440-1470

The Vulgate was the definitive edition of sacred scripture in the West for
well over one thousand years, and was affirmed as the Church's official
text at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. The Gutenberg Bible, the first moveable-type print edition of sacred scriptures, was a copy of the Latin Vulgate.

9.23.2013

I don't typically think of Spain when I think about illuminated manuscripts. That is until I was recently researching manuscripts that specifically illustrate scenes from the book of Revelation (for my most recent work). The Silos Apocalypse was created around 1100 A.D. It's actually one of several illustrated copies of Saint Beatus of Liebana's Commentary on the Apocalypse. Beatus was a contemporary of Alcuin, a monk, theologian, and geographer.

Flip through the pages yourself at the British Library website: Silos Apocalypse

While you're browsing, you can listen to some Mozarabic Chant, the liturgical music of the Iberian region which predates the Visigoths.

If you're wondering what the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos are up to nowadays, you might recall their 90's Billboard chart topping album, "Chant."

A.R. Danziger:

"I'm a freelance artist, well-versed in both digital and traditional media. If you're looking for custom graphics or illustrations, especially in a medieval style, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to working with you." -A.R.